Red Leaves in the Summer
by lindir's gaze
Summary: "I'm not trying to escape anything." Escape implied a prison or a threat, which meant that there was something he was running from. The life that Thorin had left behind was full of absences. It didn't seem possible to run away from nothing. / Thorin takes a job as a fire lookout in Greenwood Forest, where he meets his eccentric supervisor Bilbo Baggins. [Bagginshield AU]


**Chapter 1: Day 1**

The afternoon sun lit up the trees in brilliant shades of orange and red. Even though it was only the beginning of summer, Thorin could almost imagine himself walking through an autumn forest.

He was exhausted from hiking through the wilderness for the past two days, but the warm colors of the foliage swept away that feeling for a moment, replacing it with nostalgia for a different time, a different forest, walking down the sunlit path with his nephews, his sister, his father—

 _Stop_.

He hadn't come all the way out here to reminisce. Thorin dug the map out of his pocket and unfolded it. He'd passed the creek about half a mile back, which meant he had another two miles to go until he reached the lookout tower.

Hopefully he would be able to make it before sundown.

* * *

The moon was nearly at its peak when the tower finally came into sight. Thorin had gotten turned around about a mile back, and it had taken nearly an hour to retrace his steps and get back on the path again.

Fireflies drifted lazily above the long grass as Thorin trekked his way across the field where the tower stood. If he wasn't so exhausted, he might have taken a moment to appreciate the mural of stars scattered like jewels across the sky. Having grown up in the city, he wasn't used to seeing more than a dozen stars on any given night. He knew the sky was going to be one of the smaller differences he would have to reconcile in the wilderness of Greenwood.

As it was, Thorin was sweaty, bug-bitten, and just about ready to fall into bed and get some rest under a roof for once. The worn stairs of the tower creaked under his weight as he climbed up and opened the door.

His pack hit the floor next to the desk and he took care not to trip over it as he entered the room. It was tiny but far from barren—next to the desk there was a stove, a tiny sink, and a few cabinets. A couple of shelves stocked with non-perishables and a few books stood against the adjacent wall. A freestanding counter with a circular top stood in the middle of the room, but Thorin decided to investigate that later—his goal was on the other side.

There were no pillows or sheets in sight, and Thorin considered forgoing those comforts for one night, but he eventually decided to spare a few seconds to make the bed. He'd spent the last couple of nights with only the thin fabric of a sleeping bag to protect him from the roots and rocks that seemed omnipresent on the forest floor of Greenwood.

Thorin crossed the room and opened a few of the cabinet doors, but their contents were shrouded in shadow. He muttered a curse and walked across the room to the power switch. He blinked a couple times as the room flooded with fluorescent light.

It only took him three tries to find the cabinet holding the bedding. He pulled everything out of its plastic bag, leaving the containers on the floor to be cleaned up later, and set to making the bed.

He stood back a few minutes later to admire his work (the fitted sheet was only half on the mattress, but he couldn't tell from this angle, so it was fine) and was about to collapse on top of it when a voice chirped from behind him, making him jump.

"Hello? Pine to Oak, are you there?"

Thorin whirled around and scanned the room for the source of the noise, before finally locking onto the offending object—a walkie talkie, standing proud in its dock on the counter.

"If you can hear me, please pick up. I know you're there, because your lights are on."

He rubbed one hand over his face and went to pick up the radio. "Yes. Hello?" Thorin winced and cleared his throat. His voice was rusty from not speaking for...he couldn't remember, actually. A long time.

"Hi!" The voice on the other end sounded much too energetic for—Thorin glanced at his watch—ten at night. "You must be Thorin Durin, then."

"Who's speaking?" He leaned against the counter and sighed.

"Bilbo Baggins. I'm your supervisor. Nice to meet you—uh, sort of. Meet you."

Thorin glanced out the window, to the west. Silhouetted against the night sky was another lookout tower. Its lights were on as well. "Right. What were you saying about pine...something?" He rubbed his face again.

"Oh, all of the lookout towers have names. So I'm in Pine Lookout, and you're in Oak."

"I see."

There was a moment of silence on the other end, then Bilbo sucked in a breath that crackled over the radio and said, "Well, I'm sure you must be tired from hiking all the way up here. So, um, I'll let you get some rest. And tomorrow I'll get you started on your new job."

"All right." Thorin set the walkie talkie down and turned the lights off.

Just as he was about to get into bed, the walkie crackled again. "Good night, Thorin."

Biting back a groan, he walked back across the room and grabbed the radio, offering a terse, "Night," before setting it down again with more force than necessary.

With that, he finally had a chance to settle down. From this high up, the chirping of the crickets was muted, and the glow of the moon seemed distant.

Feeling as though he was hovering in space, dark and alone, Thorin stared at the wood beams on the ceiling until sleep claimed him.

* * *

Thorin had just finished unpacking his things when Bilbo called again.

"Hi, this is just me, Bilbo, checking in to see if you died or not. It's been...seventeen hours since you presumably fell asleep. Once we reach the twenty four hour mark I might have to call someone. Just let me know if you're awake. And alive."

He set his water canteen down on the shelf and picked up the walkie. "I'm here. Alive."

"Oh, good. Most people sleep for a long time the first night here—the hike takes a lot out of them. But, you know, I just have to make sure." This was followed by a nervous laugh.

"Has...anyone ever died up here?" Thorin looked around the room, as though checking for a dead body.

"No, no! Not on the first day." A pause. "I probably shouldn't have said that last part. Look, if you take care of yourself, you'll be fine. It's only three months out here. Just don't do anything stupid."

"I won't."

"Great. Then we should get along just fine. I mean, _you_ should get along just fine. As a result of you not doing anything stupid."

Thorin turned from where he was leaning against the counter and took in the landscape. The windows wrapped around the entirety of the room, giving him a clear view of the area—and it was a hell of a view. Proud mountains dotted with pines fenced in the area. A river snaked its way through the forest in the distance like a strip of silver cloth. The whole area felt vast, but strangely finite at the same time.

"So, what are you in for?" Bilbo's voice drew him back to the present.

"What?"

"What are you in for? No one takes this job without a reason. What's yours?"

Thorin scowled, though he knew Bilbo couldn't see it. "Are you implying that I committed a crime?"

"No. I mean, if you did, I wouldn't judge you. Though I suppose that depends on the crime. If you were a serial killer, then I might judge you. But what I was trying to say was, everyone who comes out here wants to escape something."

He waited for him to finish rambling, then said, "I'm not trying to escape anything."

Escape implied a prison or a threat, which meant that there was _something_ he was running from. The life that Thorin had left behind was full of absences. It didn't seem possible to run away from nothing.

He realized that the silence after his answer had drawn on for too long, so he asked, "What about you?"

"People." Bilbo's voice was a hint too cheerful as he replied. "People bother me."

"Well, in that case, I guess I'd better leave you be."

"Hold on. There's still a few hours of sunlight left in the day, and I need you to do me a favor."

"What is it?"

"The phone line's down. I use it to communicate with service, so it needs to get fixed as soon as possible."

"I'm no electrician." Thorin glanced out the window. In the distance, he could see telephone wire, arcing over a pine-covered ridge.

"Right, well, I'm not asking you to fix it. I just need you to hike up and see where the line's down. I'll report it to one of the rangers, and they'll get someone to come up and fix it. Thought it'd be a nice little job for your first day. Or does this count as your second day?"

"I'm on it." Thorin mentally traced a path from his tower to the ridge, then grabbed his pack and headed out.

"So, if you're not an electrician, what did you do before you came here?"

He pursed his lips, debating on how much to reveal, but before he could come to a decision Bilbo continued:

"No, wait, let me guess. You were a cop."

"A cop?"

"I dunno, you kind of sound like one."

Thorin wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or not. "I wasn't a cop."

"So what did you do?"

He wasn't sure why Bilbo felt the need to interrogate him about his life story. "Business."

"Like, in a drug dealer sort of way?"

"Why would you assume I'm a drug dealer?" Thorin reached the bottom of the tower and began his trek towards the ridge.

"The way you said _business_ , like you were being purposefully vague about it. Like I said, I won't judge."

"So I sound like a cop _and_ a drug dealer to you?"

Bilbo laughed at that, and the strangely pleasant sound eased Thorin's nerves enough for him to say, "I worked for a perfectly legal business. I was a manager." That was true enough, without giving too much information away.

"I see. Which company?"

"You probably haven't heard of it." He must have not, if he didn't recognize his last name. "So, is this the kind of thing I'll be doing all summer? Tracking down fallen power lines?"

"You might have a couple maintenance jobs, yes. But your main task is to look out for smoke, and report it if you see it. Sometimes you'll have to get after campers who don't follow the fire safety rules."

Thorin raised his head to glance around the wooded area he was walking through. "How often do fires happen up here?"

"Not very often. Not the dangerous ones, anyway." Bilbo gave a small grunt, as though he was stretching. "Honestly, this job is mostly just sitting around in your tower. Reading books, painting portraits, whatever you like to do. Whatever keeps you sane."

"Right." Thorin was only half-paying attention, his focus on the map in his other hand. Up in the tower, he had planned to follow the path through the woods and across the small stream he'd spotted, but somehow he'd ended up in an elevated rocky area.

He spent the next half-hour trying to retrace his steps and simultaneously read a map that didn't make much sense to him. Back in the city, everything was laid out in orderly blocks, and navigating it had been almost instinctual. Here, it felt as though he'd crossed the same landscape at least three times.

The walkie talkie on his belt crackled again, and Thorin pinched his nose, praying for patience.

"You reach the wires yet?"

"Still working on it." He squinted at the map. He was currently standing in a field, with a rocky outcropping to the west, but he didn't see anything like that on the map. How the hell had he gone from walking in a straight line to getting completely turned around?

"Oh, dear." The suppressed laughter in Bilbo's voice was audible. "Don't worry. This usually happens on the first day. You'll know your way around eventually."

Thorin scowled at the map. The sun was going down, and he knew in the dark he'd probably end up lost permanently.

"There's a creek running through the center of your sector. The wires run alongside the creek, so if you find one, you'll be able to find the other."

"Right." He'd been trying to do that for the past half-hour.

"The creek runs right by Bear's Bluff—the tall group of cliffs. Do you see anything like that?"

He lifted his head and felt his posture relax a little. Just as Bilbo had said, there was a tall bluff standing in a dark bulk against the clear sky.

"Just head towards that and you should find the wires in no time."

"Thanks." Thorin stuffed the walkie away and resumed his trek across the field.

The wilderness around him carried that same paradoxical quality he'd seen from the window of his tower. It lay spread out before him in sloping hills and peaking trees, an intimidating show of the vastness of earth, but at the same time each feature seemed as tiny as the lines of ink on his map. As though he could reach the cliffs towering before him in a single leap.

Behind him, the sun sank towards the horizon, bleeding over the leaves and grass and rocks and painting them the color of fire.

 **Any bets as to how long it'll take Thorin "I lost my way twice" Oakenshield to find his way around?**

 **I'm not too experienced with this genre of story, so bear with me as I try to navigate this whole wilderness/survival thing. This is based off the game Firewatch, but I'm only using the premise so you don't need to know about the game to get what's going on.**

 **Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Please leave a comment if you would like me to continue this story. Until next time!**


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